Not a great morning for the Public Option
6:05 am Joe opens show saying White House clearly signaled that public option is not essential which according to Joe means Whaite House gave up. It is dead. Joe says the votes are not there so people are moving on. Joe says big step back for american left. Joe asks Fortune's Andy Serwer what would health care companies prefer, really tough regulations or the public option. Skewer says it is the public option they are afraid of because they can always go after regulations one by one butpublic option holds feet to fire.
6:18 Mike Allen, Politico, House aiming to vote mid-September.
6:40 Ron Brownstein Supporters of healthcare getting more organized, but still do not match opponents energy. He feels democrat legislators are getting that something meaningful has to be passed; that the status quo cannot continue. Commentator consensus (Pete Hamill also on panel) that opposition is more about fear and anti-big government than specifically against health care.
Summary continues..Dean and Snyderman
7:05 Joe arguing everyone fighting over public option but only 1 out of 100 people even know what public option means.
7:20 Chuck Todd says to watch the blogosphere over the next week, and listen to Howard Dean, how is the white house backing away from the public option going to sit with the left. "How unacceptable will this really be"? "Will the left just grin and bear it"? Todd says this should not be surprise to the left since the White House has been hinting for months. Todd says however, some congressional democrats feeling betrayed. They were sent out to the town halls to defend public option, now Obama backing away. Andy Serwer of Fortune says he doesn't think most liberals are going to be bent out of shape about this. Both Todd and Serwer talk about how COOP concept also very complicated and so may questions will arise that we should not assume that is an acceptable alternative. Very few people understand what the coop is at this point.
7:30 Howard Dean Dean says he tinks President is doing good job of getting message out. He talks about hoe Grassley earlier voted for "death panel" language. Joe makes fun of Grassly and calls spinning on issue --amazing. Dean says he would not vote for final bill without public option language but if a senator he might vote for the bill without public option in order to get out of Senate. Dean says we know Conrad is problem so we need to get this out of Senate. Dean emphasizes that at the end of the day this Bill is going to get written in reconciliation and that is where public option will be put back. Dean does not think Obama is abandoning public option, he thinks Obama is trying to get a bill out of the Senate and into reconciliation. So house will vote version with public option, senate without public option, reconciliation will add public option and then only 50 senate votes needed. Dean--no reason to deal with republicans--the blue dogs are the key. Dean says reconciliation will take place October 16, and he has no doubt this bill will have to be written in the budget without the republicans. Dean says there ABSOLUTELY cannot be reform without public option because all we would be doing is throwing $60,000,000.00 a year at the private health care insurance industry.
7:49 Dr. Nancy Snydeman agrees with Dean that having no public option is not reform. She points to people gathering in California for free healthcare this weekend. She says access is the key. She thinks maybe there should be something like buying into modified version of Medicare for uninsured. She is very concerned coop concept is too complicated. She says it is not about government takeover it is about access.
Joe says there are over 1,000 health care insurers. So public option doesn’t add competition it perverts the competition. Skewer responds that the current system obviously does not work. Snyderman says we need to stop thinking in terms of how much this will cost us but must think in terms of this being an investment in our peoples health.